1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to recording apparatuses that can hold a stack of recording materials and feed the recording materials sequentially from the top, such as printers and facsimiles.
2. Related Art
Cassette-type ink jet printers having a cassette fitted to a printer body and accommodating a stack of sheets serving as recording materials, the sheets being fed from the cassette are known. Some cassettes have edge guides that can be moved according to the size of the sheets, so that different types and sizes of sheets can be accommodated.
In general, a pick-up roller that feeds sheets is disposed at a position shifted to the reference position side (one-digit side) in the sheet-width direction so that small sheets can be fed. Therefore, when feeding large sheets, the pick-up roller is located at a position shifted to the one-digit side with respect to the center position of the sheets in the width direction. However, this causes sheet skew because the sheet transportation orientation at the position of the pick-up roller is different from that at a position distant from the pick-up roller.
To counter this, the recording apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2009-7175 is configured to have a “raised portion” serving as a pressing portion. The raised portion has substantially the same shape as the pick-up roller and is provided coaxially with the pick-up roller to make the sheet transportation orientation uniform in the sheet-width direction.
In a single-tray cassette, because the cassette cannot accommodate different types of sheets at the same time, the sheets have to be replaced each time. To counter this, a multi-tray cassette structure having a plurality of trays stacked vertically has been proposed, so that the cassette can accommodate different types of sheets at the same time.
In the multi-tray cassette structure, small sheets accommodated in the second tray are fed one by one as the pick-up roller disposed thereon rotates. However, sheet skew can be caused by the urging force of the pressing portion that are resting on the second tray together with the pick-up roller, as well as by the strain (the difference in pressing force) between the pick-up roller and pressing portion.